The life-saving medication Narcan, also known as naloxone, will be available for purchase over the counter starting this week.
From 2019 to 2021, California’s opioid-related deaths spiked 121%, with the crisis disproportionately affecting males, Black and Native Americans and those aged between 30 and 34.
Spider Davila, the harm reduction program coordinator at Los Angeles Community Health Project, called the opioid crisis “intense” and said that it was “getting worse.”
Narcan’s impact
In the last year alone, the Los Angeles Community Health Project says the medication was able to reverse 8,277 overdoses in the greater L.A. area including Norwalk, Antelope Valley, Long Beach and Pacoima.
And this year to date, the organization has reversed 4,274 overdoses, including two at the Overdose Awareness Day event at MacArthur Park on Aug. 31. However, numbers, they said, are under-reported.
The FDA approved non-prescription, over-the-counter Narcan in the form of nasal spray in March of this year. The drug manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions announced last week that it has begun shipping out the medication to retail stores.
Having the medication widely available, Davila said, will normalize it, “which helps reduce stigma.”
Cost concerns
The high price point of $44.99 concerns Davila, who says the cost will limit who has access.
“The overdose crisis disproportionately affects people that are unhoused, it affects people in communities of color. It affects people with lower incomes,” they said. “And at $44, if you don’t have insurance that can pay for that, it’s still not getting it out to everybody that it needs to get…
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